1911
Census of England and Wales Now Online
The 1911 census of England and Wales is now online at http://www.1911census.co.uk.
Not all counties are available, but when complete, it will identify 36
million people. At present, 27 million people are online. It is
anticipated that the site will initially experience a high level of
visitors logging on to search the records.

Completed by all householders in England and Wales on Sunday, April 2,
1911, the census records show the name, age, place of birth, marital
status and occupation of every resident in every home, as well as their
relationship to the head of the household. The 1911 census was the
first to ask questions relating to fertility in marriage. Married women
were asked to state how long they had been married and how many
children had been born from that marriage.

Marian
SmithOne of
the great assets for understanding the process of immigration to the
United States is Marian L. Smith, historian of the Citizenship and
Immigration Service. For years, Marian has lectured and written
articles—some for AVOTAYNU—on the immigration process.
Smith now has a new line of communication on the subject; her own
personal blog at http://mariansmith.com.

Her first topic addresses a question posted to JewishGen recently: Are
there missing manifests from Ellis Island? The title of her article is
“Fact or Myth: Missing (Cabin) Manifests
1897–1903.” This 2,600 word dissertation does not
merely answer the question, but educates the reader in the process on
how passenger lists were handled by the Immigrant Service. Marian had
other information to share, so please also read “More to the
Point: Missing Manifests,” a 2,700 word afterthought.

AVOTAYNU
at the Printer
The latest issue of AVOTAYNU is at the printer and should be mailed in
about two weeks. One of the unusual articles in the issue is the
regular “Ask the Experts” column where subscribers
ask help in solving problems and experts Randy Daitch and Eileen
Polakoff give suggested solutions. This issue’s column is
devoted to only one brief question from a subscriber. It is the problem
facing many American genealogists in that an ancestor cannot be found
in the Ellis Island records nor in the first census where they should
appear. The ancestor also moved from the comfort of Jewish Brooklyn to
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Why asks the inquirer? Daitch devotes two
pages to answering these questions. He describes the methodology for
how he found the ancestors in the Ellis Island Database and how he
determined the relationships between families living in Wilkes-Barre.
We can all learn from his analysis.

One aspect of family history research that is lacking is standards. I
know of only one: standards for citing sources which has been published
in a book, Evidence Explained: Citing
History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace, by
Elizabeth Shown Mills. For the past two years, I have been developing a
standard for citing dates, names and places in a genealogical database.
My conclusions are published as the lead article in AVOTAYNU. I have
submitted my proposal to the International Institute for Jewish
Genealogy for approval.

There are 12 other articles in the issue plus the usual columns of
Contributing Editors, U.S. Update, Ask the Experts, Book Review and
From Our Mailbox.

The latest issue is our “Fall 2008" edition which is very
late. We hope to catch up with the Winter issue in the next 60 days.
You can subscribe to AVOTAYNU at http://www.avotaynu.com/journal.htm

JewishGen
Continues to Grow and Grow
JewishGen ended 2008 with a number of announcements demonstrating the
site continues to grow. The Yizkor Book project reported that in
December two new books, two new entries, and six updates have been
added to the site: http://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/translations.html.

The JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial
Registry—JOWBR—added approximately 50,000 burial
records and 25,000 new photos of tombstones to its database at http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/Cemetery/tree/CemList.htm.
There are now listings of 2,033 cemeteries worldwide and plots in the
searchable database, comprising 1,074,427 records. New entries are for
cemeteries in Alabama, Indian, Mississippi, Argentina, Israel and
Romania.

The ShtetLinks project—web sites that provide information
about ancestral towns—has added seven additional towns in
December. The list of towns can be found at http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/.

Hungarian
Death Notices Online
FamilySearch, the genealogy arm of the Mormon Church, has placed
approximately 500,000 death notices from Hungary online at http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#c=1542666;t=browsable;w=;p=2.
About 30% represent Budapest, the rest from surrounding areas. They
have not yet integrated the names into their central index, so it is
necessary to browse the specific web site for the database to retrieve
information.

Prague
Conscription (Residence) Records Online - Progress Report
The June 17, 2007, issue of Nu? What’s New?
noted that the Prague National Archive was in the process of indexing
their conscription records collection (1850–1914).
Conscription records are residence permits issued at the Prague police
headquarters for the Prague region. The Archive now has reported they
have indexed more than one million entries. It is complete partially
through the letter “L.” Surnames searched beyond
this letter will provide results only for married women whose married
name starts with A-L.

The entries include the name of the head of household, followed by the
name of wife, children and other relatives with whom the family shared
the residence, date of registration with the police, number of the
house, and job of the man concerned. It may also include year and place
of birth, religion, and, in case of a married woman, her maiden name.
The sheet may also contain entries concerning marriages and deaths.

Calendar
Trivia
Is it possible for Chanukah to occur before Thanksgiving? No, but they
do occur on the same day about once every hundred years. The next time
it will happen is in 2013.

Can Purim coincide with Valentine’s Day? Yes. It last
occurred in 1995 and will take place again in 2014.

The last time the first day of Passover and Easter Sunday coincided was
in 1983, and it will not occur again until 2123.

The earliest Rosh Hashanah can happen on the secular calendar is
September 5, but it is rare. It will occur in 2013, but will not take
place again until 2089.

These are some of the fascinating discoveries uncovered when using
Stephen P. Morse’s latest contribution called “When
did...” It allows comparisons between dates of the secular
and Hebrew calendar. A more practical use is to determine yahrzeit
(anniversary of death) dates for any year.

The feature appears at the Morse site http://stevemorse.org
in the “Calendar, Sunrise/Sunset, Maps” section.

Planned
Tour of Israeli Archives
Rose Lerer Cohen, a professional genealogist, is planning an organized
tour of the major Israeli archives from May 3–13. It will
include tours and on-site research to such places as Yad Vashem,
Central Zionist Archives, Central Archive of the History of the Jewish
People, Museum of the Diaspora, and Atlit—The Museum of
Illegal Immigration. Other site vists are planned. This is a privately
organized tour. For more information regarding itinerary and cost
contact Cohen at rlerercohen@gmail.com.

Google Your Family Tree
Order Processing Now CurrentWe
are now current with out shipments of Google Your Family Tree.
We received nearly 500 orders in the last 30 days which strained our
shipping resources. The book was one of the best sellers we have ever
had, and the response from purchasers confirmed my opinion that,
“is a must for every household, not merely for family history
research, but for every family member who uses the Internet to glean
information.” Information about the book can be found at http://www.avotaynu.com/books/Google-Your-Family-Tree.htm

Nu?
What's New
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by Avotaynu, Inc.
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